


So It Goes

by DisappointMe



Category: Captain America (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Winter Soldier (Comics)
Genre: Lonely Heroes, M/M, Running Away
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-16
Updated: 2014-02-16
Packaged: 2018-01-12 15:48:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1190772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DisappointMe/pseuds/DisappointMe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The thing is, Bucky does want out.  He wants out and he wants to take Steve with him when he goes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	So It Goes

It isn’t abnormal for Bucky to pace the halls of the apartment in the middle of the night. Not since Siberia, anyway. When he sleeps, it’s only ever for a handful of hours at a time and never past five or six in the morning. When he sleeps, he dreams. He remembers. Steve said (when he’d offered him the second bedroom, when he’d told Bucky he wouldn’t be a burden, when he’d asked Bucky to please stay with him) that when he was restless like this to wake him. He was certain Steve hadn’t meant every night, not that he would even do it once. Not that Steve was ever home much anymore.

When Bucky had come home, Steve had stayed by his side in the hospital for two days before being shipped to the greater unknown to protect America and her interests or whatever. They’ve seen each other for maybe twelve total days across four months. At first, he thought maybe it would be easier this way, with Steve gone all the time, but now it feels like it did just after Steve was shot on the courthouse steps. Bucky in Steve’s apartment, in his life with his things and the memories of their past; all of the could-bes that never were lurking like ghosts all around him.

He steps into the living room and is surprised to see that Steve is home and awake. He hadn’t heard him come in and is admittedly surprised that Steve was able to sneak by him. Steve isn’t so great at being stealthy and he’s usually careful to make a lot of noise since the whole Winter Soldier thing. The living room is dark and Steve is sitting on the loveseat with a beer in his hand and his feet propped up on the coffee table. On the wall behind the opposite couch, their old newsreels from the forties are playing soundlessly. The glow of it makes Steve’s skin look gray and sickly, his eyes almost too blue. He looks drawn and tired and not much like the man on film, but Bucky’s heart aches deep in his chest all the same.

“Bad mission?” Bucky asks, walking around the couch and lifting Steve’s beer from his hand. He drinks the last half of it in a few swallows and sets the empty bottle down on the coffee table before settling down next to Steve. Steve doesn’t move his arm from where it rests along the back of the couch so when Bucky sits back, Steve’s thumb just barely brushes along the nape of his neck.

He looks over and Steve shrugs, “Why do you ask?”

Bucky tips his chin towards the wall where he and Steve are talking with Toro and Namor and it seems both like yesterday and centuries ago. He looks at himself standing next to Steve like he belongs there and maybe he did, then. He didn’t feel that way at the time and he certainly doesn’t feel that way now. “You only watch the newsreels when you’re feeling particularly maudlin.”

“Maudlin,” Steve repeats with a quirk of his lips. “That in one of your ‘word-of-the-day’ emails?”

Bucky smiles. “Don’t be ridiculous. You know I hardly ever check my email.”

Steve’s smile is sweet in the flickering light and Bucky stares too long, watches it fade to a soft upturn of his lips before turning his attention back to the projection. He thinks the version of him up there looks young and cocky but he knows that’s not right. He can’t remember the last time he felt young. It wasn’t there, in a bombed-out factory in Italy. The blood on his hands hadn’t even dried by the time the cameras arrived. No. He was never young. It’s just that he feels so _old_ now. Old and tired and rundown.

“I miss it, sometimes,” Steve says quietly, like he’s trying not to be heard. “The war. This. It was easier then. Less complicated, at least. There were politics, sure, but I never had to be part of them. It was just us against them. You and me and it was easy. And now? Easy makes me wary.”

When Bucky turns his head to look at Steve, Steve’s eyes are locked on the wall where the two of them stand tall and proud talking to reporters. He shakes his head and looks at Bucky for a moment before turning his eyes back to the newsreels and continuing.

“I never wanted that. I wanted to be a soldier. That was all I wanted. I didn’t want to be a symbol or a martyr. What I wanted was to protect my country and they told me this was the best way to do it and I was stupid enough to believe them. The only good that came out of my being Captain America is you.”

“That’s not true,” Bucky says, but his heart climbs up in his throat anyway.

“Us working together was great for me. Never did anything but all the wrong things for you. I’m why they made you…well. If you hadn’t been my partner…”

“I’d be dead and you’d be drinking alone in the dark probably crying about me.”

“Probably.”

They sit in silence for a while longer and Bucky watches them on the wall. He wonders if Steve knew then. About Bucky. Why a dumb kid who was trained to be a stone-cold killer would try to be a hero. Why Bucky would ride a drone to his should-have-been death. It sure as hell wasn’t just for his country.

As if reading his mind, Steve asks, “Why do you do it? You could just pick up and run away. Go underground and make a new life for yourself. You don’t have to stay and fight.”

He shrugs, lets his head fall back against the couch, Steve’s fingers curling around the back of his head, warm and soft on his scalp. “Salvation. Redemption. And you. Mostly you.”

Steve’s chuckle is soft and low and Bucky turns his head to look at him. “Fury said pretty much the same thing. After the courthouse, he said it was because you didn’t want it to be anyone else. After I came back, he said it was because you wanted to impress me.”

“Not quite,” he says with a shake of his head. “I wanted you to be proud of me. I didn’t want you to see me as that…what they made me.”

“I never saw anyone but you, Buck.” His words are heavy and it feels like there’s more than one meaning behind them, but it’s late and he’s getting sleepy again so he tries not to read too much into it.

“And what about you,” he asks, tapping Steve’s thigh with his knuckles and leaving them there. “Why do you keep doing it?”

He’s quiet for a few moments before he answers, breaking Bucky’s heart when he does. “It’s what I was made for. What else would I do?”

Bucky can’t answer that because he _was_ made to save the world and being the ideal America should strive for _is_ what Project Rebirth was about but none of those things are Steve. Captain America is only everything he is because of who Steve Rogers is and Bucky believes in Captain America because he believes in Steve. Bucky frowns a little and lets his knuckles brush back and forth over Steve’s thigh and he settles back, his eyes falling halfway shut as he watches the reels. He feels himself drifting off, his fingers curling around Steve’s knee, Steve’s hand dropping down so it rests on his shoulder. His thumb brushing the nape of his neck.

“Look at you,” Steve says softly. Wistful and thick with feeling. Bucky opens his eyes to see Steve with his arm around his young self’s shoulders, pulling him close and they’re both smiling like they’re the luckiest men on earth. He doesn’t remember that day, but he knows that look on his face, that smile. He can imagine how he felt standing next to Steve, being pulled close to his body like that. “I was so in love with you then.”

He knows that now. He wishes he’d known then because it would have been worth it. He thinks it might be easier to want what he could have had then rather than long for what they’ve told themselves isn’t worth the risk. _Could you imagine how big the target you’d wear would be?_ Steve had said. He wishes Steve was wrong about that.

“And now?”

He turns his head and looks at Bucky closely, lets the hand on his shoulder move to cup the back of his neck. “Now? More than that, I think.”

Sometimes he thinks it’s better knowing that how he feels about Steve is how Steve feels about him. That isn’t the case tonight because he’s tired and he’s not sleeping well and he just wants to pull Steve into bed with him and drown in him until he can’t think of anything else. He sighs and hefts himself up off the couch, Steve’s hand sliding down his shoulder and back as he stands.

“Yeah,” he agrees. The boy he was at nineteen loved Steve with a depth and passion he never believed he could have felt about anyone. This, though. What he feels for Steve now is unparalleled.

Bucky walks around the loveseat, pauses behind where Steve sits and bends down to press a kiss to the crown of his head. His hair is soft and a little damp from his shower and Bucky takes a moment to breathe him in before pulling back and walking towards his bedroom. He stops in the doorway and glances over his shoulder to find Steve staring after him, looking like he’d love nothing more than to follow Bucky to bed.

He’s tired and it’s late and he misses Steve so much he’s sick with it. That’s the only reason he can come up with to why he gives voice to the one thing he wants most: “Hey, Steve?”

“Yeah?”

“I would leave, you know. I don’t want this, I just… If I run, will you go with me? If I pick up and disappear, will you come?” It’s all he wants if he’s being honest with himself. It’s been all he wanted since Steve came back, but he only wants it if he can have it with Steve.

Steve’s brow furrows for a moment, and he looks at Bucky like he’s trying to decide whether it’s a joke or not. Steve opens his mouth to say something, then seems to change his mind chuckling a little and shaking his head. “Sure, Buck. Of course.”

He expects the disappointment because he knows Steve is just humoring him, but it still stings. Bucky smiles, sad and resigned and it probably looks more like a grimace, if the look on Steve’s face is anything to go by. He goes on anyway, though, because it’s believing that they could have this that helps him make it through some of the long nights.

“Let’s say Maldives. June tenth of next year. That place with the villas over the water where we went on that one mission. The one where we almost…”

Steve’s lips quirk up and Bucky thinks he must remember the fruity drinks and the laughing and stumbling along the beach. Bucky pulling him close and Steve letting him. Steve leaning down, pressing his mouth to Bucky’s, kissing him like it was everything. Yeah. He remembers.

“Meet me there.”

Steve is quiet for a long moment and for just a second, he thinks maybe Steve understands that he’s serious. Then he smiles, “Wouldn’t miss it.”

Bucky stays there for another minute, letting himself believe that they’ve given themselves a termination date before he shakes himself out of it and puts his feet back on the ground.

“Don’t stay up too late.”

 

 

*

 

The thing is, they hadn’t talked about it again. Steve was gone the next morning and the greatest length of time they’d spent together in months was ten days in March when Steve was recovering from having a building fall on him and Bucky was recovering from cracked ribs, a fractured cheek bone and thirty eight stitches from the middle of his back to his hip. They weren’t really up to much deep and meaningful conversation.

By then, his mind was made up and on June ninth, he’d handed in his letter of resignation, cleared out his US accounts and booked a flight. He left a note on the refrigerator for Steve (because he didn’t expect him to follow, he didn’t even hope [except he hoped so much]), said goodbye to Natasha and Sam and was gone.

He pulls his sunglasses off and sets them down next to his empty glass and frowns. It shouldn’t take ten minutes to bring him a refill. Not at the price he paid for this place. He takes a deep breath and looks out at the sun setting on the horizon, turning the sky orange and purple and he does his very best to not think about everything he left back in that Brooklyn apartment.

“Rum punch? You hate these things.”

Bucky has to swallow against the swell of relief in his throat because despite everything, he had _wanted_ and now…he turns his head and looks up at the long, well-muscled lines of Steve’s body. He’s barefoot and wearing a pair of low-slung blue and white board shorts, dark sunglasses and nothing else, holding Bucky’s drink up to his lips and taking a sip.

“I was being festive,” Bucky says with a smile. He takes the drink Steve offers him and gestures to the lounger beside him. Steve takes a seat on the edge, knees brushing where Bucky’s arm rests over the side. “You got my note?”

Steve tilts his head and shakes it once, “No. I haven’t been home. Did you think –”

“It was a long time ago. You could have forgotten.”

Steve knocks his knee into Bucky’s hand. The left one, covered in that artificial skin Fury gave him to help him blend in. “Me? Forget a date with you? Not on your life, pal.”

Steve takes his sunglasses off and sets them next to Bucky’s on the little table. His eyes are bright and he looks so good Bucky feels a little breathless. He reaches out, wraps his fingers around Steve’s calf and brushes his thumb over his knee. “Sorry I’m late. Plane got held up in Sri Lanka.”

“So did you just…?”

“Leave? Yeah. Closed up my last mission on the eighth, was at the debriefing in Bangladesh and now I’m here.”

Bucky sits up, slots his knees between Steve’s and they’re so, so close. “I can’t go back, Steve.”

“I said I was with you, didn’t I?”

Steve’s smile is the happiest he’s seen in a long, long time and Bucky leans in, presses his lips to the corner of his mouth and grins at the helpless little mewl Steve makes. Steve’s hand comes up to cup the back of Bucky’s neck and Bucky tilts his chin to kiss Steve more surely, closing his eyes and sliding his tongue along Steve’s lips. He licks into Steve’s mouth, sliding forward until he’s almost entirely in Steve’s lap. Steve laughs against his lips and turns his face to bury it in the crook of Bucky’s neck.

“So where do we go from here?” Bucky asks, sitting back and reaching for his drink and his sunglasses. He slides them on and stands, stepping out and walking slowly away from the lounges and towards the villas. He smiles over the rim of his glass when Steve steps up beside him and slips his hand into Bucky’s.

“To the room. I think we need a repeat performance of what happened the last time we were here,” Steve says, bumping his shoulder against Bucky’s. He thinks of the last time, in the dark, lying against the sweaty sheets and they almost gave it all up then. If Steve had said yes, Bucky would have gone anywhere with him. “Minus the part where it only happens once.”

“I think it was two and a half times, actually.”

“Three?”

Bucky smiles, “Three for me, two for you. I was splitting the difference. So sex. More sex. And then…”

“I’ve never been to New Zealand.”

“Then New Zealand.”

“And we won’t go back.”

“Never.”

He doesn’t know if that’s entirely true, but at least he won’t be alone.


End file.
